{"id":7375,"date":"2011-08-19T12:33:59","date_gmt":"2011-08-19T19:33:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/?p=7375"},"modified":"2011-08-19T12:33:59","modified_gmt":"2011-08-19T19:33:59","slug":"oedipus-and-the-riddle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2011\/08\/19\/oedipus-and-the-riddle\/","title":{"rendered":"Oedipus and the Riddle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Thanks to Richard O&#8217;Connell for suggesting this Jorge Luis Borges poem as appropriate to the time-travel theme.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p> <strong>Oedipus and the Riddle<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Quadruped in the dawn, erect at noon,<br \/>\nand wandering on three legs across the blind<br \/>\nspaces of afternoon; so the eternal<br \/>\nSphinx saw her inconstant brother, Man.<br \/>\nAnd to her rocky silence came a man<br \/>\nwho unlocked the riddle in the mirror;<br \/>\nterrified, he saw the shattering image<br \/>\nof his destruction and his error.<br \/>\nWe are Oedipus, doomed as he, to be<br \/>\nthe triple beast: child, saviour, suppliant-<br \/>\nall that we will be, all that we have been.<br \/>\nIt would annihilate us in an instant<br \/>\nto glimpse our monstrous being; mercifully<br \/>\nGod grants us issue and oblivion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Sadly, God grants us nothing of the sort.  But happily, we are <em>not<\/em> annihilated by glimpsing our monstrous being.  We may be disappointed, disillusioned, or discombobulated; but those are temporary conditions that we can strive to overcome.  Embrace your monstrous being!  It&#8217;s the only true strategy in the face of Time&#8217;s relentless march.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thanks to Richard O&#8217;Connell for suggesting this Jorge Luis Borges poem as appropriate to the time-travel theme. Oedipus and the Riddle Quadruped in the dawn, erect at noon, and wandering on three legs across the blind spaces of afternoon; so the eternal Sphinx saw her inconstant brother, Man. And to her rocky silence came a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-time","category-words"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7375\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}